I don't know which blades you're talking about. For a while, ogata blades were available here new for $225 for a matching iron and subblade. Nakano's planes with a ledged dai and a paulownia box were $225 (they were brought over from japan, and presumably sold for a profit). That was in a lull time when americans weren't buying hand over fist (perhaps the 90s - after the first rush from the 1980s wore off).
The ogata blade that I got was later, though - I got it from a dealer here who brought it back.
Then, Iida started selling them and also, a retailer over here got them. Now, they're $800. Not sure what iida sells nakano blades for - but probably about the same.
I doubt any are sold to japanese buyers within half of that or even less.
What you're talking about is very small volume small part of the market kit. If the average carpenter saved and bought something like ouchi 1, that would be understandable. If they bought $4000 sets of oire nomi that were really decorative and overly perfect aesthetically, I doubt it, unless it was a gift late career. But you can sell that stuff to americans and europeans in droves.
The knife thing is different than the tool thing - at least in true high end knives that are laminated in house (there are a whole lot of prelaminated knives floating around here for about $400-$600 - I don't get it - I've made knives out of prelaminated steel - it's uneventful to say the least - everything else done to the blade after thermal cycling and hardening and straightening (something afforded by the cladding - you can tap them straight when they're fully hardened, and they will bend and take a set back to straight without issue and without cracking)). True in house knives are forged in house, decorated by hand and hand scraped and finished. Are they functionally better than thermally cycled rikizai? Probably not. The cost is in the tradition - the hand scraping, the hand finishing with stones (it's an offshoot of sword stuff, and far greater in appeal because most people cook).
Some of my chisels did come from japan, and they did come from this end of the selling (not publicly displayed and from a relatively exclusive dealer in tokyo). I wanted to see what they were like and before stan covington sold tools, he got them for me at cost, store tags left on and all (they are old stock shimamura/kiyotada, but some of the later chisels - the longer kiyotada when on based on the ones I have, the neater his chisels got, but they didn't get ornate - just more finely finished). I get that whole thing, the back room idea, and the actual kiyotada chisels at that time sold from old stock (and not to the public) were less than the frilly stuff sold here.
There are chisels that cost more than kiyotada, but not many. They are very good.
My point with my comments isn't that there isn't a small segment of the tool market that is really nosebleed and very traditional, but that's not what's being passed off to americans. What we're getting is stock of retired planemakers or late career that has been purchased and marked to $800 when it sold for eons at 1/3rd or 1/4th. Is the toolmaker seeing any of that? I hope so.
There's also misinformation given as part of the selling, but I think that's true across the board. If you have white 1 and assab or other swedish steel, you'll be told that the swedish is easy sharpening. If you make tools, you learn pretty quickly that it's just tempered softer. The ogata blades were passed along as him using "boutique purified" steel that's really easy to sharpen but holds an edge as long as anything else. Well, mine was easy to sharpen, but the lamination was thick (this isn't that desirable) and it was relatively easy to sharpen because it wasn't that hard. In my opinion, the step off of highest hardness made it more functional for any user, not just intermediate, but nobody wants to hear that - they want "the hardest that's special made to still be easy sharpening". IT didn't wear that long, but again, I don't care about that - only people who can't sharpen well get obsessed with edge life vs. edge uniformity, at least to a point.
I bought and sold stones from japan for a while - a couple of hundred of them. I did it at the time because I could find the same labeled stones that the european and japanese (stores who catered to westerners) sellers sold for about $200 vs. the $600-$800 that they would sell for. I would grade them and sell them for close to cost to make a point. I don't think those stones sell for that price in japan.
I do think there are stones held back by the mines for wealthy japanese customers, but they are truly rare and very low volume, and the average person wouldn't "get it" if they used them.
http://japantool-iida.com/gem/2021/03/okudo-tomae-karasu-stone.html
have a look at this stone. As a former seller of stones, I don't get it. This is a $200-$300 stone to me, at most - new, without chips off of it (I would likely pass on it at this point as stones of that quality and type without lines aren't hard to find). But iida specializes in selling to americans, and he sells everything expensive except when he doesn't want to (at one point, he was selling nakano planes on his front page for $500 and on ebay selling off excess for $150 - i got one of the latter - it's a good plane.
Here is the ogata blade that I had (I bought it from a dealer here who marks things up very significantly to fund his trips to japan - I paid a little over 1/4th of this amount, but had to make my own dai. This is ideal for a dealer selling to americans - I would be surprised if ida pays $200 for these blades now. For a long time, they were about $500, and then japan woodworker started selling them for $800 here claiming they are "the only seller" , and iida magically raised his price to $800.).
What you and I are talking about are different things - what's being told to people who don't speak japanese (to buy relatively common stuff and then pay the moon for decorative tools vs. the very understated and perhaps rare and truly hand done stuff that you're speaking of with knives that appeals to a very narrow segment of the market).
Separately from that, I recall on a shaving forum, someone asked Jim Rion "I'm coming to tokyo, can you tell me where there is a good store for kamisori - I want to buy something really good". Jim's response (he was selling kamisori at the time), "there's not much on the ground - they're mostly sold to westerners by export sale". I would bet that there are older kamisori somewhere in small numbers made of sand iron steel by someone who was famous, but the vast majority of $250-$800 kamisori are just machine made tools sold to westerners based on a narrative. And they are pretty easily matched (sometimes bettered) by a few picked from a group of 10 that just need to be reground on buyee for $125 (that's the price for the group). I sometimes regrind them and sell them on ebay for about $35 ,and people are always shocked when they get them. I did have an iwasaki kamisori of swedish steel, but it was expensive and it felt like more effort was made on the box and lacquer to prevent rust than thermal cycling to make the edge fine, and strict control of hardness.
And lastly, just to sort out what's real (along with the kiyotada chisels), I bought some fairly well regarded planes by mosaku, a higher end tsunesaburo plane (the ones supposedly made by hand - most of the irons look like they're mass produced from prelaminated material. Maybe they aren't and they have some kind of faster process that does quick lamination, but what's left is very uniform looking steels with a thick lamination), ogata (of course) one by nakano (not the inexpensive one mentioned above - I also got that one - the first one was made with an expensive andrews steel), and I may have forgotten one or two that are long gone. I then switched over to buying some from buyee .
I then got about half a dozen blades from buyee that were unused or close to it, with and without dais, but based on visual aspects. I looked for irons that had kamaji that showed a lot of bubble holes in it (it's usually softer or sharpens better) and thin laminations (again, faster sharpening without giving up anything, and quite often a sign of more skill in the making). The average price for that half dozen, some barely used, some unused, all 70-72mm - about $100. They're on japan's version of ebay, and the ones that are marked up a lot don't sell. On average, the half dozen group was better quality (but some of that due to picking aspects that I couldn't pick with the dealer sold plane), and none was defective. The mosaku plane that I bought was white 1 and overhard (it would've probably held an edge if it had been tempered some), the ogata was softer than any other plane I've had, but probably a little harder than a typical stanley iron, and one of the tsunesaburo planes had uniformity problems with super blue steel - which isn't uncommon as the tungsten in it is one of the harder carbides to get dissolved and dispersed evenly. In order to know if an effort was successful, you'd have to etch each one or use each one and test - mine held an edge OK, but it was always full of tiny nicks. A real disappointment.
